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The only advantages in the current trade system over the old one that have been argued is the turn in rates are superior... Umm, they increased turn in's in 3.0, no reason they couldn't just do that again, to make up for doubling seed and sapling prices. A quick poll across the server and most vets will agree that the old system made more sense and was preferable.

Haven't read the whole thread, just OP - not something I typically do, but this isn't a discussion thread, just a "give your feedback" thread, so...my thoughts.

T1 packs: I've said for a long time that they're unbalanced in the payouts and materials required. I realize the payouts got tweaked a bunch when the "new" (current) trade system was added, without getting into extensive data I can't really go over it line by line or anything - so I'll leave it at that. Maybe they're all balanced now, maybe there's some exceptions, I'm not really sure, just pointing it out that it used to be an issue. As for the materials...that also got changed up a lot with the adding of gilda packs and the current trade system, but if, for example, a pack from say Hasla costs you 1g in mats and turns in for 20g and a pack from Perinoor costs you 5g in mats and turns in for 17g, then one or the other is too cheap/too expensive. Maybe that's also been largely fixed.

Either way, both contribute to the problem of Trade Center A always has too many larders because specialty/fert/plaza packs are "worse" to turn in there, whereas Trade Center B always has too many specialty packs and Trade Center C always has too many fert/plaza packs. It's a definite improvement over the old system compared to always doing the exact same thing, but it isn't quite even - it became if you have larders, check A first, you're probably just taking them there unless larder %s at A are really low. It isn't quite an "I have larders, where do I feel like driving to today?" system yet.

T2 packs: I'd imagine others can weigh in on this one much better than myself. The number of T2 packs created daily ties directly to the amount of charcoal that can enter the game daily - if the charcoal supply is too low, then those numbers need to be lowered because for our region they don't work properly. Other than that, make sure payouts and costs and balanced as well.

T3 packs: Gonna be somewhat short on this one too. Not sure if I'm alone on this, but I think the family quest would work better as a bonus - you turn in a T3 pack with the quest active, quest completes and you get an extra 20 or 10 or however many charcoal bonus additional to what the Daru gives you for the pack. Freshness timer applies to the pack, it's just a daily "turn in 1 T3 pack, get a reward of family stuff and X charcoal" quest. People could still hoard I suppose, but they'll be turning in old packs so they'll get a lot less than turning in a fresh pack and getting the bonus.

I also agree that charcoal supply is too low. Not sure that I care exactly how it gets increased, just that it does. If T3 packs were plentiful though, nobody would care if people hoarded them, so.... Also...just like everything else, T3 packs need to be balanced. An extra 10 minutes of driving through conflict zones for 1 extra charcoal isn't balanced - not thinking of anything specific there, just making a point.

Possibly tie the trade centers together? Say specialties get turned in at Austera and fert turned in at Vil...Larders turned in at Yny...they still make a T2 pack. Turn in values could be dif per location but the total turned in contribute to T2/T3 packs being generated?

I agree the ratio of normal packs required to make a over sea pack could be lowered to 8ish

I agree hoarding charcoal packs on your land to do daily family quests is wrong (But I love family quests)

I love the new trade system over the old one but tweaking can help and my direct thought is this. All tradepacks from all areas need to be worthy to produce to keep the variety flowing and let the % of profits fluctuate to determine what gets made based on demand

However currently the % of profit based on demand is not good enough to keep the flow alive if some regions are excluded from the formula

Example: Trade center is getting low on Larders and the 130% demand is there. Many places are not part of the solution because no one is making Larders for a turn in of less than 20gold at 130% (Falcorth as example) .

Solution: No larders should have a turn in value under 25 gold at 130%. The labor/resources/time involved does not provide any incentive to make for less

Example: Trade center is getting low on regular packs and the 130% demand is there. Many places are not part of the solution if you can make a regular pack in White Arden for the same or better value as Airian Rock which has a 10 minute longer travel time. So like Falcorth , Airian Rock is excluded from the demand solution

Generally speaking most the price points are correct and short distant runs have been improved but don't make them better than a long distant run or you just reversed the crisis and Larders need to be affordable from every province starting with a price point of not less than 25gold at 130%

Every region of the map needs to have all their packs viable relative to other regions and distance should be a key determination in the equation so when you can no longer get 130% for that Larder you will still want to run a regular pack that you can whip up in a fraction of the time

also keep the resources to make packs in check. specialty pack from Mahadevi 60spice & 200 cucumbers ? While Arcum's specialty is 80grain and 40sunflower

As i see it, the cargo system was good fun until they increased the buy prices. Before the increase, the profit from a pack was roughly the same as the price to buy one, so at 50% pack loss you would still break even. This resulted in a lot more risk being taken which led to much pvp fun.

As it is, the risk is not worth it for the small profit to many, so what happens is people are using safe methods now.

Tier 2 packs are now moved like this:

And charcoal is hoarded until peace hits, then moved with alts for the family quest

What needs to be done, is make risky runs more profitable compared to safe runs. So like the OP said make the normal way to move charcoal more profitable compared to the family quest, but also make tier 2 packs more profitable when moved without the use of the safe ship.

Also, too many alts camping the trade centers being used as spy cameras. Kicking anything with a [AFK] tag to the nearest nui would be a good start. This would also combat the alts hoarding packs in haulers for the next peace/safe ship.

I really like this thread. You have people that didn't read it, people that don't seem to know how the systems work, and then people that claim to support the OP but then describe a solution to the exact opposite problem that the OP is complaining about.

The trouble on Kraken is that Solis (and to a lesser extent, Villa and Yny... but not the trade posts on the west) is so piled up with aged packs that it's near impossible to clean them out even with a few thousand normal or gilda packs. People run aged packs from all over the place in massive quantities for some reason on that server where this isn't a problem on any other server or even the west side of Kraken itself.

I took a few screenshots of Kraken's Austera port a little while ago . . . It's really strange:

Who the heck is doing things like Windscour Salve to Solis for 20g... the pack costs that much to make, why bother? You can see there is an issue here... but it isn't the trade system. The problem is that people have no idea what packs to run to make gold and cargo.

A Few Options - In order of rationale

1.) Make the t2 and/or t3 Cargo Packs disappear after two hours from purchase.
2.) Make it impossible to take the t3 pack off your back (like its supposed to be).
3.) Delete the family quest for cargo.

I lost the screenshots, but on Conviction there are 100~120 t3 packs on the ground in Mahadevi and Arcum Iris alone. Yet people say we aren't turning in enough packs to make t2 cargo, or aren't running enough t2 to create t3. No. There is plenty of charcoal. It's just sitting around. And that idea, while charcoal is THE bottleneck in advancement in the game, is appalling.

I think a Hybrid of the old system and the new one would be best. Allow me to make packs on the East or West and take them to the other side for gold.

Increase the amount of gold for oversea runs and still make cargo generation. This would encourage merchant runs again as they can stop and unload to a port and take cargo back with them to their homeland.

Additionally T2/T3 packs need to be lower in cost. We want to drive people to want to do those run and as of right now there is less incentive.

I would also bump the gold turn in for conflict zones and possibly add a 4th sea side trade port (Bring back Sanddeep!)

I think a Hybrid of the old system and the new one would be best. Allow me to make packs on the East or West and take them to the other side for gold.

Increase the amount of gold for oversea runs and still make cargo generation. This would encourage merchant runs again as they can stop and unload to a port and take cargo back with them to their homeland.

Additionally T2/T3 packs need to be lower in cost. We want to drive people to want to do those run and as of right now there is less incentive.

I would also bump the gold turn in for conflict zones and possibly add a 4th sea side trade port (Bring back Sanddeep!)

How much cheaper do the T2 and T3 cargo need to be? Currently they are priced between something like 12 and 49 gold. I'm not sure how low they can actually get since people buy them all up before they get that low, but I have seen them at 19.7496 at 130 stock where the trade posts, I believe, still hold up to 200.

People buy them at 40+ gold because they are worth running to them. If they weren't worth running then there would be piles of cargo sitting in the towers.

4.5 does actually have a bonus for turning in packs during war according to the Omnom translate patch notes. We will see how it works out in practice, but they way I see it is this is just going to turn in to the dominating group earning more gold than everyone else.